


Be Right by your Side

by Akumaku



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21863809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumaku/pseuds/Akumaku
Summary: A few months after the events of Persona 5, Futaba starts having nightmares about her mom again. At least she has her super cool and comforting boyfriend to help her out in her time of need, right?
Relationships: Amamiya Ren & Sakura Futaba, Amamiya Ren/Sakura Futaba, Kurusu Akira & Sakura Futaba, Kurusu Akira/Sakura Futaba, Persona 5 Protagonist & Sakura Futaba, Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakura Futaba
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	Be Right by your Side

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place a few months after the events of Persona 5. When Akira had to go back to his hometown, he wanted to stay in Leblanc with Sojiro instead of going back. He didn’t want to leave his new life in Tokyo, so he gave one look at Sojiro. That look was all Sojiro needed to know, and Sojiro told him to ask his parents first with a smile on his face. After getting permission from his parents, he was allowed to stay as long as he wants. He was just told to not cause any issues while he’s over there and was told to stay in touch with them. Sojiro happily took him in.

When Futaba opened her eyes, she found herself alone in a place closely resembling her palace. She saw some torches light up parallel to a seemingly never-ending staircase in front of her. At the top of the staircase, she saw her mom with her back turned.

"M..Mom?"

The second Futaba called her name, Wakaba turned her head around like an owl and stared intensely at her with bloodshot eyes. 

Then, Wakaba slowly started walking towards her. 

"M-Mom?" Futaba asked nervously. She hasn't seen anything related to her mom in her dreams, so this is catching her off guard by a lot. "Okay, this isn't funny..." 

Then, Wakaba started picking up speed towards her faster, and faster. 

"Nope, nope, NOPE, NOPE!" In that instance, Futaba's fight or flight instinct kicked in, and she immediately started booking it. 

She kept running down the flight of stairs for who knows how long until she tripped and looked back. Thankfully, her mom was nowhere in sight. She felt relieved until she noticed two glowing dots in the darkness farther down the staircase.

"Oh, no..." Her mom lunged at her in what appeared to be her smaller but more enraged version of her Sphinx form from when they fought her. It was only for a split second though as Futaba’s screams of fear and Wakaba’s blood curling scream of rage overshadowed everything else. **"NOOOOO!"**

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Futaba opened her eyes this time, she was now in her bed. She woke up breathing heavily, and her heart was beating intensely. She felt like she was having a heart attack, but it was just her rapid heartbeats pounding against her chest. She looked at the clock and saw that it was 3:23 in the morning.

“Oh thank god, it was just a dream…”

Even so, she still felt afraid of going back to sleep. What if she has the same dream again? What if it gets even worse than that?

She immediately thinks of Akira and thinks about texting him to see if he was up. She picked up her phone and starts typing a message out. Although after thinking a bit, she deletes it before pressing Send. 

“No, I have to stay strong. For him.” She thought.

She puts her phone back on the bed and starts going back to sleep.

…until she heard her phone go off. Twice in a row actually.

“Oh no, don’t tell me…” 

After unlocking her phone, her suspicions were right. Akira was the reason why her phone was going off. He first sent a wholesome couple meme to her and sent “I saw you typing. Why’d you stop? Something up?”

 **“… CRAP, HE SAW ME CHICKEN OUT OH GOD WHY IS HE UP THIS LATE!"** She screamed internally to herself. 

Unfortunately, her luck was terrible because the IM app shows if someone was typing to you or not for a few seconds. Because Akira was in the middle of sending something, he caught wind of that and immediately thought something was wrong when she stopped typing and didn’t send anything.

She couldn’t lie to him, not after they gave their full trust to each other after she showed him her proud achievement of going to Akihabara by herself. She decided to be honest and tell him upfront what’s up.

_‘nightmare… >_<’_

_‘Want to come over and talk about it?’_

_‘U sure? It’s pretty late though. Plus I don’t wanna bother u…’_

_‘’Taba, you know that you never bother me. Come on over. I’ll make us some coffee, okay?’_

_‘ljlnwnerffso okay ;-;’_

Deep down, she knew that she couldn't reject his offer, especially when they both know how stubborn they can be with each other. She quickly gets out of bed. She had on her usual JLMK shirt on, but she had some alien emoji pajamas for her bottoms. Her hair was the epitome of bed hair: all messy and tangled up.

“Eh, screw changing. I’ll just go with what I have. Don’t want to keep him waiting.”

She slipped on some green house shoes and started walking out quietly as she didn’t want to wake Sojiro up.

Sojiro wasn’t against the two dating at all. In fact if anything, Akira was the only person that Sojiro could trust with dating his daughter. He felt that the two understood each other the most out of anyone in their group. Of course, being the protective father he is, he laid out some ground rules when it comes to them dating. One of them was to always treat her as a priority and to not get her pregnant until she’s 22 and married to him. These were easy regulations Akira could follow though as he already treated her as a priority since her heart was stolen back in August and would rather wait a long while to do that kind of stuff with her anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime, after Akira’s last message, he quickly gets up and starts heading downstairs to start preparing the cups. 

“Hmm, should I try a different blend tonight or no?” He pondered a bit to himself. He thought that he would have to scour for unique set of beans if he tried a different blend.

“Nah, I’ll just go with what we had today.”

He went ahead and picked up the beans he used earlier today and started brewing. After a couple of minutes, the door gently swings open and he sees his cute gremlin girlfriend in her strange but cute and messy attire. While she starts sitting down in a booth, she noticed that he was chuckling a bit while looking at her.

“W-What are you laughing at?” Futaba pouted and ask.

“No one. It’s just that my sweet and lovable girlfriend just looks extremely adorable tonight in her outfit~”

Her entire face was red after his remark. Even when she clearly knew why he was laughing; she was still caught off guard by her dorky boyfriend’s demeanor. 

“S-Shut up and finish brewing, ya dork.” No matter how much she knows how he can be an extremely cheeky and cheesy bastard, it still gets her every time he does it. 

Akira went ahead sat two cups next to each other in one of the booths and sat down next to Futaba in the booth. To help her out a little, he wrapped one of his arms around her for comfort.

“So, you ready to talk about what was in your nightmare?”

“Wait,” She leaned her head on her shoulder and took a sip of her coffee. Resting her head on his shoulder instantly made her tall but somewhat-easy-to-tease boyfriend blush. “Okay, now I’m ready.”

“Alright, I’m all ears.” Akira smiled warmly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Futaba was done, Akira immediately leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. He then leaned his head towards hers. This immediately made her face red as a tomato, but at the same time, she obviously didn’t hate feeling like this when it comes to Akira.

“I’m really sorry you had that kind of nightmare, but don’t let this lead you into thinking that you can’t ask me to be there for you, okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just felt weak again, ya know? Like after all those months of trying to better myself, it feels like it was just a slap in the face to all of that.”

“I get that, but that doesn’t mean you’re weak overall. After everything you’ve been through, you’re still here. You’re still standing, and you’re still fighting back. If you ask me, you’re showing off your strength just by sitting here with me.”

“God, it always feels like my dork of a man knows exactly what to say to perk me up” Futaba teased.

“Heh, after living here for over a year, I pretty much noticed that giving advice and helping people are some of the best things I can do.”

“Yeah, besides being a big show-off back when we were still thieves.” Futaba said with a cheeky tone. 

“Ya know, you say that, but you know that you loved it.” Akira says while unironically trying to do the thing where anime girls flip their hair.

“…Akira,” his girlfriend obviously looked disappointed in him, “you don’t have long hair. You KNOW you can’t do that properly.” Futaba states as she does it herself.

“At least you carry me because you did it flawlessly, you cutie.”

**“HNNNNNNNG”**

Futaba instinctively covered her face out of embarrassment. This has got to be a new record for her tonight with how many times her face turned red. Every time Akira said something super cheesy, she is always falling for it somehow. Maybe it was his charm? Or maybe it was just because that’s just how much she loved her key item? Regardless, she didn’t hate feeling like this in the slightest.

After a bit of being embarrassed, Futaba piped up again. 

“I know I already talked about it before, but seriously, thank you for giving me my life back. If I didn’t have you guys, I don’t know what I would have done to myself if my thoughts kept going the way they did.”

“It’s no trouble. Ever since we found out the full story from Sojiro, I was the one that kept insisting that we go to your Palace the most.”

“R-Really?”

“Mhm. I wanted to do all I can to help you because hearing about your pain back then just pisses me off to the core. No one deserves to go through what you had to go through. That’s why I’ll be here for you always. Okay, Futaba?”

“Mhm, I’ll…be here for you too.” Futaba felt nervous saying it, but it felt right. “I know that you’re strong as well, but just like me, just remember that you don’t have to go through your problems alone…okay?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll jot it down in my memory as a promise.

“Good. I love you Akira.”

“I love you too, Futaba.”

They hugged what felt like for ages, and after they finished, Futaba went ahead and booted up her comfort playlist. One of the songs that stuck out to both of them was this song called No Matter What from this movie they watched in the past. The part that stuck out to them was this:

> _Through whoever you’ve been (Through whoever you’ve been)_
> 
> __
> 
> __
> 
> _Through whoever you’ll be (Through whoever you’ll be)_
> 
> _Through whatever you lose (Through whatever you lose)_
> 
> _You will always have me (You will always have me)_
> 
> _At the end of your rope (At the end of your rope)_
> 
> _I’ll be holding you taut (I’ll be holding you taut)_
> 
> _I’m gonna be right by your side no matter what_

After the song, they looked and smiled warmly to each other. That was until Futaba started blushing and asked a very daring question.

“U-Um…is it okay if I can stay here tonight and sleep with you?”

Akira was slightly taken aback at her request. Even if Sojiro didn’t mind them dating each other, he wasn’t sure if they should sleep in the same bed, regardless if Akira’s intention was purely innocent. He didn’t want to risk it all just to die the next day. Even so, he knows that he can’t refuse her when she asks like that.

“Sure thing. I don’t mind.” Akira said while smiling warmly.

Soon after, they both started walking up to the attic. Morgana was sleeping on the bed before he noticed the two walking in. He was about to comment on why she was here this late, but noticed the clock nearby showing 4:09 AM.

“Had a bad night, Futaba?” Mona asked worryingly 

“Not even going to sugarcoat it, but yeah.”

“I can tell where this is going already.” Mona jumped off the bed and jumped up to the couch. “I’ll just sleep here tonight. Gotta give the lovebirds a bit of space, ya know?”

Both of their faces lit up as soon as he said that, but as soon as the couple were about to comment on that, they already heard snoring from the black and snarky cat.

“That Mona…” Futaba growled out of embarrassment.

“Oh well, not gonna let that bother us.” Akira states after turning off the light and getting in bed.

Futaba saw the opportunity and went for it. For a split second, Akira could swear he saw her eyes gleam in a malicious way.

“ULTRAAAA **CHARGE!”**

Futaba exclaims and jumps onto the bed into Akira’s arms. Akira groaned a bit due to how unexpected yet also not surprising this was. It was unexpected because he got caught off guard, but also expected because this IS Futaba he’s thinking about.

Somehow even after Futaba’s love tackle, they both felt super comfortable snuggling each other. Even if that was the case, Akira had to comment on something in his mind.

“You know Sojiro might kill me when he notices you’re not at home tomorrow, right?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell him that we didn’t do anything. Knowing him, it’s gonna take FOREVER to try to calm him down, but I can try.”

“Alright, I’ll try to help as well. Besides, this is worth it if you ask me.”

“Hehehe, exactly what I was thinking~” Futaba responded with her usual gremlin snicker.

After a while, they both naturally drifted asleep. As long as they were right by each other’s side, nothing can really stop them.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading this! This is my first ever full fanfic, and I genuinely had a lot of fun making this regardless of how nervous I was posting this so just AAAAAAA I hope y'all enjoyed it!
> 
> I've always made small headcanons on Twitter about these two, so writing a full on story felt really intimidating at first @_@
> 
> I somewhat plan on writing more ShuTaba fluff like this, so make sure to be on the lookout for that in the future! ShuTaba has always been my favorite pair in Persona 5 since my very first playthrough back in 2017. These two are so freaking adorkable together, and it also doesn't help that ShuTaba has quite a number of parallels with my girlfriend and I's relationship (minus the height difference between Akira and Futaba because that's deadass the opposite with my girlfriend being taller than me LMAO)
> 
> Also yes if you could tell, the song in the story is from the Steven Universe movie. It was the song I was listening to when thinking of story concepts, so I thought why not use it for the theme of the story? xP


End file.
